For conducting maintenance services on a train or locomotive, it may be required to move (or spot) the train within or outside of a railway maintenance facility or shop in many cases, it may be desirable to do this without operating a diesel engine or other power source of the train that is usually used for driving the train. It may be preferable to move the train to the railway shop in another manner.
Spotter control systems are in use that are operated from a cab of the train and drive the train by applying voltage from an alternate source of power, for example, locomotive batteries across at least one of the traction motors of the locomotive, to develop power. Braking is achieved by operation of brake controls present on the train after the brake control has been charged with air pressure.
Generally, the spotter control systems may be manually controlled such that an operator seated in the operator cab may need to activate the spotter control system when the train is approaching or is in the railway shop. This may be a laborious, time consuming process, and may even be prone to human errors due to reliance on the operator. Further, if the spotter control system is activated when the train is in the railway shop, additional lead time may be incurred in the servicing or maintenance activities.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,339 (hereinafter referred to as '339 patent) describes a GPS controlled multiple source material application or ballast spreading system. The system includes tracking the position of a plurality of ballast hopper cars using GPS derived coordinates and controlling the opening of multiple ballast doors to spread ballast on desired sections of track for railroad maintenance. The process involves tracking the current hopper loads, the opened or closed state of the ballast doors, and the concurrent amount of ballast which has been spread on the desired track sections.
However, the '339 patent does not provide an effective means for controlling the spotter control system on the train. Hence, there is a need to provide an improved system and method for the control of the spotter control system on the train.